Strike two... and they're out

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FRENCH train, bus and other public services were disrupted after
a call by unions for a nationwide strike to demand higher wages and
protest against new labour laws that make it easier to sack
workers.

Unions asked workers from the public and private sectors to walk
off their jobs between 8pm on Monday and 8am today. Strikers plan
to cut transport, school, hospital and other services in major
cities and are demanding that employers and the Government restart
negotiations on working conditions and wages.

The walkout will be the first against Prime Minister Dominique
de Villepin, who was appointed on May 31. He introduced a new work
contract that allows companies with fewer than 20 employees to sack
them within two years instead of six months. The reform is intended
to encourage hiring and curb a jobless rate that reached a
5½-year high of 10.2 per cent in May.

"This mobilisation is entirely justified by the liberal and
repressive offensive organised by the Government," France's main
parties of the left said in a joint statement on October 1. "We
demand the abolition of the new work contracts."

Hiring in France stagnated in the second quarter as slowing
growth deterred companies from adding workers. Employment costs in
France are more than six times those in Poland, averaging
43,990 ($A68,712) a year for each worker, a February study by
New York-based accounting firm Deloitte & Touche showed.

Most French people support the call by the unions. An Ifop poll
for newspaper l'Humanite and weekly La Nouvelle Vie
Ouvriere showed that 74 per cent of the French were in favour
of the action, the second nationwide strike this year. The poll
surveyed 1003 people and didn't provide any margin of error.

The leftist opposition to the de Villepin Government, including
the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Communist
Revolutionary League and the Green Party, called on workers on
October 1 to back the strike and "make the Government back
down".

The last nationwide strike, on March 10, disrupted public
services including trains, schools and hospitals, as unions
protested against government plans to increase the weekly working
time. About 35,000 people took part in the Paris march, from Place
d'Italie on the Left Bank to Place de la Nation across the Seine,
police officials said.

Unions have forecast more than 150 protest marches, with rallies
in all major French cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon,
Toulouse and Rennes.

The Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail has been
joined by the country's main unions, including the Confederation
Generale du Travail, France's largest, Force Ouvriere and
Confederation Francaise des Travailleurs Chretiens.

Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer, the state-owned railway
that also manages part of the Paris Metro, said on September 30
that six unions had given a strike notice. The regional and
inter-regional train link will be working at 40 per cent capacity,
the company said in a statement published on its website.

Thalys trains, which connect Paris and Brussels, would not be
affected by the strike, SNCF said, although one Eurostar was
cancelled, according to the train operator's website.

Two in three high-speed trains  or TGVs  within
France would run normally. One in three trains not departing from
Paris would run, SNCF said.

Traffic in Paris suburbs was disrupted, the train company said.
Traffic on Transilien, the SNCF-managed network in the Paris
region, will be guaranteed at 35 per cent of capacity.

Reseau Autonome de Transport de Paris, or RATP, the publicly
owned company that manages Paris' Metro system and buses, will
guarantee two vehicles out of three in the Metro and bus
networks.

Under its contract, RATP employees can be sanctioned if they
don't guarantee service to users. RATP, which has received notice
from four unions about the strike, said it would provide more
information as soon as it could.

A spokeswoman for Air France-KLM Group, Europe's biggest
airline, said by phone that some of the company's medium-haul
flights would be disrupted but that its long-haul flights would
continue. A strike of traffic controllers might disrupt flights at
Paris Charles de Gaulle-Roissy and Orly airports, she added.